Korean Beauty products Drive Skincare Growth

After the chaebols took over our drawing rooms and our roads, its now the turn for a range of their cosmetic brands to raid the dressing room. A host of such Korean companies including Faceshop, Innisfree, Klavuu are now available on online platforms.

There are others like Innisfree’s parent company AmoreFree which are planning to launch their own stores directly. With Rajshree Empires JV with Korean companies, the fight for shelf space will get shrill.

Nihir Parik, chief business officer, Nykaa said “Online platforms see Korean brands feature in the top selling list already. “On our platform, we see people purchasing cosmetics as many as 8 times a year and skincare products are seeiung a 4x growth. Korean skin care products are among the top 10 brands and contribute close to 8% of our overall sale and have pushed our skincare sale by 15%”.

K-beauty routines on social media also add to the popularity of the Korean cosmetics. These videos see million hits causing consumers to shift towards South Korean brands.

An online personal care portal said “The attraction appears to be the pricing strategy and the vegan twist. “Decade-old brands such as Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda are priced upwards of Rs 1,000 and customers think twice before buying their products. But, products like Plum and Gravitale have an average cost of Rs 500 and are being lapped up by users,” Rahul Dash, co-founder, Purplle”.

The “go-natural” tag is pushing sales of home-grown brands too. Naturma, an online natural brand, sees skincare grow faster than hair care and overall growth at 30-40% every month. “We are largely an e-commerce startup and we see facial moisturisers, aloe vera gels, oils among the top selling products on our own website and aggregators like Amazon and Nykaa.

The brands go digital first, partnering with online platforms such as Nykaa and Purplle, who make use of content and social media influencers to demonstrate the effect on Indian skin . Nykaa has tutorials on the platform and on social media, to sensitise potential customers.